What are the relevant hazards for Fire and Civil Protection in South Tyrol? EBP analyzed the relevant hazards and assessed the corresponding risks jointly with South Tyrolean experts.

The Italian Province South Tyrol is regularly confronted with events of relevance to its fire and civil protection authorities. Particularly hydrogeological natural hazards of recent years have demonstrated that preventative measures can contribute to risk mitigation.

In Spring 2010, the cross-border project «IKRIS – Inter-regional crisis information system»; was established within the framework of the INTERREG support program Italy-Switzerland 2007-2013. The objective of this project was, amongst others, to further develop an early warning system for hydrogeological natural hazards.

In this context, the Province’s Department for Fire and Civil Protection tasked EBP to perform a pragmatic hazard and risk analysis for hydrogeological natural hazards. The results shall assist in better estimating the early warning system’s cost-effectiveness ratio. The analysis also included technological and societal hazards to demonstrate additional need for action to the South Tyrolean administration.

EBP provided the following deliverables:

• Elaborating an overview of relevant hazards in South Tyrol.
• Elaborating reference scenarios for each hazard and discussing them in an expert workshop.
• Estimating frequency and potential impact for each scenario and assessing the resulting risks in a second expert workshop.
• Visualizing the results by using the software application RiskPlan 2.2.
• Assessing the overall results of the risk analysis, including additional findings from the workshop proceedings. The project was executed in close cooperation with South Tyrolean experts.